


changing, falling, fading (please watch over me)

by evanescent



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Injury, Dissociation/Derealization, Gen, I guess it is??, Panic Attacks, Past Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Relationship Study, a mix of pre and post flashpoint canon, i just feel. very strongly about my dead robins, minor jason/omc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-22 12:55:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11380614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evanescent/pseuds/evanescent
Summary: Jason, Stephanie and Damian are all having a night gone wrong.Fortunately, they also have each other.





	changing, falling, fading (please watch over me)

**Author's Note:**

> i still have the two worst exams left but i really needed to get this one out of my system
> 
> i don't _think_ this fic is actually as heavy as the tags make it sound, but please heed the warnings
> 
> the title is (mashed up) from demon limbs by pvris

It’s an early Thursday night and Jason is on a date.

At least, he supposes it’s a _date_ \-- even if he ended up going because he lost a bet with Stephanie. (He won’t agree to a pancake eating challenge with her _ever again_.) She kept mentioning that one friend of a friend from the university, claiming she knew Jason could get along with him, yapping until he relented. And, as reluctant he’s to admit -- he’s enjoying himself. Blake is rather quiet at first, almost shy, but seems to never pass up an opportunity for a smart or sarcastic remark; he also doesn’t like olives on pizza and has enough enthusiasm to discuss nineteenth century literature outside his class. (If Jason knew beforehand he’s going out with a Theater major, he’d have _strangled_ Steph. This way, he’s feeling just a little wistful about his teenage self’s dreams of college.)

When, after the pizza, Blake suggests going to the cinema to watch something not intellectually challenging, Jason hesitates only briefly. He’s been to the theater date exactly once, many years ago. He went with his classmate Rena to see _The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe_ and during the whole screening, he was equally engrossed in the movie and the fact their elbows and arms touched every now and then. Thinking back to it now, Jason isn’t even sure if Rena actually knew it was supposed to be a date rather than a meeting between classmates. Jason, however, fretted the whole morning about every detail, until Alfred took him on the side and assured everything was perfectly alright and under control. Alfred’s stamp of approval meant a lot to Jason -- it still does -- but in a different way than Bruce’s. When Alfred says you’re good to go, Jason doesn’t question it and simply trusts him.

They end up choosing some low-budget comedy horror film about vampires and zombies. It’s that kind of a movie which is usually so bad it makes you laugh, the one that Tim would have a field day with criticizing and Cass would keep shushing him as Jason and Steph just cackled at the bad special effects and sheer ridiculousness of it. The cinema hall is half-full and it seems most of the viewers also came for something simple, not really scary.

All in all, this certainly isn’t the movie Jason would expect to get triggered by.

It’s fine until the last half an hour or so, when one of the characters gets buried alive. Going in, Jason expected a lot of lame jokes about zombies, low-quality makeup and a parody of well-known tropes, and that’s what he got. But, for some goddamn reason, this scene is actually serious and convincing, from the work of light and shadows, through the sound effects of creaking and hollow thumping against the wood, to the fact you’re watching it from her point of view. It feels too _real_ for comfort and Jason hears his blood rush loudly in his ears.

The moment the girl, hyperventilating and sobbing uncontrollably, breaks the lid of the coffin and the dirts starts getting in, Jason stands up and wills himself to slowly bolt the hell out of the auditorium.

He means to go to the bathroom and calm down, but his steps end up taking him outside the cinema, into chilly winds of Gotham’s night. He all but slumps against the wall of the building, ignoring curious looks the passersby send his way. It takes him two minutes and three different exercises to get his breathing under control, and even then Jason feels a bit of vertigo and wants to puke his guts out.

It’s stupid, he realizes, trying to shake the feeling off his skin. Probably the girl ended up getting pulled out of the ground by her un-dead boyfriend and their vampire friends, and now they’re discussing their nonexistent plan in the middle of a presbyterian cemetery or something equally ridiculous. Maybe someone literally lost a head and it looked so fake you couldn’t help but laugh. It’s a bad comedy horror, for God’s sake, not a movie that’s supposed to trigger people who actually _died and dug their way out of their graves_ , even if only for the fact such people don’t exist, as far as an average person is aware. And if they do exist, they probably know better than to watch movies like these.

Maybe Jason is still too out of it, after apprehending Scarecrow with Dick earlier this week and getting dosed with yet another new version of fear toxin. Or maybe he’s just stupid enough to think he’s above his triggers, which is. Huh, that’d be a good one.

Pressing the heel of his palm in the centre of his forehead, Jason takes out his cellphone. He stares at it blankly for a few seconds, wondering whether he should inform Blake he felt bad and went home earlier, or text Steph to tell her he knew this date was a bad idea.

In the end, decision is made for him; his phone starts ringing and Jason picks up, not even fully registering who is the caller.

“Yeah?” he rasps, watching the trail of his own breath in the air.

“Are you up for patrol?” comes a brusque question and it takes Jason a moment to identify a slightly high-pitched voice as Damian. His voice change still catches Jason off guard.

“What?” he says, confused.

Damian clicking his tongue is audible over the line. “Father and Grayson are currently elsewhere. Therefore, I’m asking you.”

Under different circumstances, Jason would go as far as to say he feels touched he’s apparently the third person on Damian’s list of picks for patrol, but something doesn’t add up. “Aren’t you benched right now?” he asks.

“This is not essential,” Damian replies, which is an answer enough. “I’m going out either way. The question stands whether you want to go with me or not.”

It’s nice he asks, Jason thinks distantly, for someone to watch his back. That he doesn’t run off by himself or without informing anyone because they all know that kind of behavior had grave consequences, more than once --

“Jason.” The fact Damian uses his name brings him back to reality; it happens more often these days, but it’s still kind of a novelty. “Are you fine?” Jason doesn’t miss a trace of awkwardness in the question. “You sound… off.”

Jason takes a deep breath and straightens up. “Yeah, I’m okay. Give me an hour, I’ll come by the Cave and we can go,” he says, taking one step after the other.

“Too long,” Damian replies dismissively. “I will meet you somewhere around Robinson Park.”

“Damian, don’t go out by yourself--” Jason starts, but the line clicks off. “Damnit,” he mutters, irritated, and starts walking to the nearest bus stop.

And to think this evening started out promising. Jason just can’t have _nice_ things.

…

Stephanie was supposed to leave for a patrol some time ago, but instead she’s here, in the cramped and cheap ( _but her own_ ) apartment, laying in the bed and shaking every now and then.

It happens sometimes, old scars inflicted by Black Mask ache, making her whole body shudder as she tries to remind herself it’s just a phantom of pain. It usually comes without a warning, a reason, and Stephanie hates it even more then, feels… stupid, kind of. Inadequate. It happened a long time ago, she tells herself. She’s no longer the same person she used to be then. She’s stronger, smarter, less irresponsible, more enduring.

But, as much as she’d like to believe it, these are just words. It’s hard to keep repeating herself that when there are physical proofs of things she remembers, some of them, with painfully clear accuracy. An ugly, jagged scar on her right shoulder from the sharp shard of glass. Some long ones from a scalpel, a series of punctures from a power drill. Many of them have healed and pretty much disappeared, but the ones that remain still taunt Stephanie. She isn’t ashamed of them, although she misses the times when she could dress without having to consider what can be covered up by clothes and what by body makeup. The scars are just bitter reminders.

As if she could ever forget.

What’s stopping this from happening again, she wonders sometimes, wonders now, gasping for a breath and closing her eyes. Happening to her, or to someone else. _That_ Black Mask may be dead, but Stephanie knows well enough he isn’t the only one, nor the only one capable of being cruel in this city. Gotham is, quite possibly, one of the worst places on Earth. It drives her up against the wall and there are times when she wants nothing more than to pack up and leave. She could be a broke college student by day and a vigilante by night almost anywhere at this point. And yet, leaving would feel too much like a… betrayal. A lie. Again. 

Sheltered under blankets that she knows cover her body, but not really _feeling_ them, or anything, at this point, Stephanie remembers being dead.

She knows she wasn’t dead like Damian, shot and thrown around and stabbed, so close yet so far from the family that couldn’t help him, but later did everything to bring him back. She wasn’t dead like Jason, suffocating under burning rubble far from home, buried in the ground, only to come back without anyone noticing. She was never dead like them, although technically she _did die_ \-- flatlined on Leslie’s operating table more than once, heart refusing to keep on going. But for a very long time, she was dead -- to her mother, Tim, Cass, Barbara, the world. To herself, too.

That year of being alive while being dead still seems strange to Stephanie -- once it’s a fleeting, distant memory, a passage of time that was not, by any means, wasted, but rather served as an impasse, a hiatus. More often than not, however, it resurfaces in Stephanie’s mind as a nightmare she hasn’t quite woken up from yet. Sometimes it’s just a thing someone will mention, something she missed during that period. Other times, it’s the way they look at her, like they expect her to screw up again, to get hurt badly. To disappear.

It freaks her out. She wants to say, scream, _I’m here, I’m not going anywhere, I’m real_ , but words get stuck in her throat; the moment passes, like it never happened. But she knows better than that.

“I think they don’t always realize it themselves, that they do it,” Jason told her once. It was after a joined patrol that ended up with both of them sharing a little too much after drinking not enough tequila at one of Jason’s safehouses. Stephanie remembers laying in his bed, spread out like a starfish, staring at a big crack on the ceiling. Jason was sitting on the floor, his head resting on the edge of a mattress. “I mean, Bruce does that all the time, everyone knows that, but the others… They’re not very good at coping, too.” He chuckled lowly. “Crippling loss issues, here we come.”

She thinks they had this conversation not that long before Damian’s death. Talk about timing.

As always, the not-pain fades away after some time, like a bad memory. Stephanie welcomes the return of senses with relief and, for a brief moment, even considers going out. However, she knows she’d do no good tonight, might actually put someone in danger. Instead, she wriggles to find a comfortable position. She’s just falling into uneasy sleep when her phone chimes, indicating a text message. Stephanie is tempted to ignore it, but that particular tune is for Jason, and suddenly, she remembers he had a date tonight. She’s curious how it went.

After a great effort, she untangles herself from the blankets and picks up the phone. She didn’t expect that kind of a message, though.

 _R is hurt ETA 7 min at your place_ , the text from Jason reads.

It takes Stephanie a long moment to understand the meaning of it and once she does, it feels like something heavy and foul settles at the base of her throat.

So much for any kind of peace tonight.

…

“Aren’t you exaggerating a little?”

“Me, _exaggerating_? You were the one who texted me he’s hurt and didn’t precise how badly. What I was supposed to think? Twisted ankle-hurt or _dying again-hurt_?”

Hushed voices are arguing somewhere to Damian’s right, or so he thinks. He doesn’t want to open his eyes to confirm his guess; laying on a familiar, worn-out couch is pleasant. That, and a bandage around his chest, already tell him a lot.

“You’re right,” Jason says eventually, sighing. “Sorry about that. I didn’t want to waste time on texting.”

“I’m thrilled to know you consider texting me such details a waste of time,” Stephanie snaps, but most of the heat from her voice is gone. She just sounds tired. “It’s good the wound wasn’t serious. Didn’t even need stitches.”

It confirms what Damian suspected, but he still feels a small wave of relief wash over him. He still doesn’t give away he’s awake, though. He’s ashamed for what his stubbornness and cockiness got him into and, strangely so, he feels... _bad_ for worrying Jason and Stephanie.

He was waiting for Jason near Robinson Park, just swinging around to kill the time, but once he heard a scream, he couldn’t ignore it. All in all, it was just a simple attempted mugging, and a thug with a knife got lucky; Damian felt a little too sure and let his guard down for a moment too long. The next moment he knew, there was a cut across his uniform, across his _chest_ , and he was bleeding.

Pain wasn’t terrible and he didn’t feel dizzy, so Damian told himself not to panic -- he was fine, he’d be fine, it wasn’t bad -- but it didn’t work. All he could remember in that moment were arrows sticking out of his body, his pleas to Mother dissolving into nothing as the sword went down.

He couldn’t do anything then, and he felt like he couldn’t do anything now, too.

Damian doesn’t know where Jason came from, only that he must have taken care of the petty criminals. Jason was talking to him, helmet gone and his features twisted into something like fear, but Damian couldn’t make out the words. And yet, somehow, it helped; Jason’s steady and low voice, his hands on Damian’s shoulder and cheek, pressing just hard enough to be grounding. Snapping out of the daze felt like breaking through the surface of water.

He didn’t even argue when Jason picked him up and started carrying -- to Stephanie’s apartment, apparently. Damian preferred that to going home; his stomach churns at the thought of upsetting Alfred by having disobeyed his benching and coming back hurt. He shouldn't have done that, he knows that much.

“What are you doing?” he hears Jason ask quietly, over soft steps on the floor.

“You damn well know what,” Stephanie whispers back and there’s a sound of something being thrown. “Reflex, Jay. Put these down, I’m gonna get blankets from the bedroom.”

A few moments later, when the only source of light seems to be the TV playing some soap opera on a low volume, Damian finally cracks his eyes open. He’s propped up on Stephanie’s hideous, fluffy pillows, covered by a quilt he knows for a fact was made by her mother; Jason and Stephanie made their place on the floor by the couch, quietly eating some chips.

It’s almost a familiar setting to Damian at this point, the three of them, more often than not at Stephanie’s place. It happened after an especially bad fight between Father and Jason, with Stephanie taking the latter’s side; Damian didn’t take part in it, not verbally, but he thought Father wasn’t right. It happened after Stephanie got injured during a party on her campus, which Damian frankly found ridiculous and so he said so as Jason just kept laughing.

“I haven’t watched this in a while,” Jason mutters. “Is Ana still dating that asshole?”

“No, she’s actually on the run because she’s a main suspect in his murder,” Stephanie answers. “Which we don’t know if she committed, but if yes, I totally support her.”

“Obviously.”

For a long time, Damian didn’t understand why Stephanie, out of all people, seemed to be the one that got along with Jason best, and frankly, he didn’t care. _Even Robins must stick together_ , she once said jokingly, reminding Damian that she has, in fact, worn his colors once upon a time, even though she, or anyone else, rarely brought that up.

As with everything he does, Damian strives to be the first, to be the best -- his pride and upbringing could accept nothing less. Being Robin was no exception to that. He told himself he wouldn’t be limited by the legacy Grayson started, by favorable opinions Drake held in the community and, most of all, he wouldn’t be held down by the memory of Todd and Brown’s deaths ( _failures_ ). He’d not become a shadow, a ghost among the living, the mere mention of his name making Father go rigid, his features twisting into something Damian always thought was disappointment. 

But things happen, like unexpected betrayals from mothers that end in deaths, and then, just then, Damian understood that the expression on Bruce’s face was one of guiltiness, self-blame. Just like he understood neither Jason nor Stephanie wanted it, and so didn’t Damian, after he came back.

“I never asked, by the way,” Stephanie whispers a few minutes later. “How did your date go?”

Jason gives something between a sigh and a groan. “I don’t think there’s gonna be a second one,” he replies, rubbing his nose. “I bailed out and gave a weak excuse over a text. I’m not cut out for dating, especially not civilians.”

“Funny, did you know Kara is single?” There’s a thump and Stephanie muffles a laughter. “Hey, you didn’t have to shove me off the pillows, you tsundere.” Setting in again, Stephanie adds, “Seriously though, I don’t think all is lost. If you enjoyed your time with Blake, you should give it another try.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Jason replies, sounding a little less decided. A moment later, he asks, “Is everything okay? You didn’t look too hot when I came in with Damian, no offense, of course.”

Stephanie snorts quietly. “Fortunately for you, none taken.” She draws her knees and blanket up to her chest. “I was just having a not so good night. If you know what I mean.”

“I can guess,” Jason says simply. “Sorry for crashing at you. I’d have handled it alone, in retrospect.”

“Don’t apologize for that,” Stephanie says. In the dim light, Damian can see her drop her head on Jason’s shoulder. “Actually, I’m glad you guys are here, despite the circumstances. It’s… better than being alone.”

He hears Jason exhale a bit shakily. “Yeah. I know.”

Damian closes his eyes and finally relaxes, feeling the sleep creep up on him again. He’s alive and safe here, he knows that much, and he’s accepted.

Sometimes, it’s just enough.

**Author's Note:**

> if you think i'd fight dc executives for their treatment of jason and stephanie - and damian - especially in regards to their deaths, you're one hundred percent correct. they should come meet me in the parking lot at any given time and i'll deliver an ass kicking


End file.
